Fascinating Facts about Grimsby

Grimsby this morning

This is going to be a short one as the chances of us playing there tonight would appear to be slim to none!

Grimsby should be called Cleethorpes as that is where their ground is situated.  By the same token Corby should be called Drunken, Druggie FC, and the Direones should be called the Direones.

The town smells of cod.  Just imagine if the warm, sweet, all-encompassing weetabix waft we get from Burton was stinking fish... Eeeuw!

The most famous celebrity from Grimsby is the actress Julie Peasgood. No, me neither.  Just about puts Grimsby on a par with Kettering when it comes to producing glamorous celebrities!

Where Are They Now? No.2 Mark Cooper.

All homes sold, providing they benefit from
solid construction, with none of that arty-farty flair stuff

Cooper's quality as a Manager was based upon making his teams difficult to beat.  He made sure the entire team defended the goal when the opposition had the ball. 

Which, to be honest, was quite often as Mark's standing instruction was to get rid of it as quick as possible.

Nevertheless, when it came to protecting what you had, and being "as safe as houseses", Mark was your man. 

It can come as no surprise then to see that although he has left football behind, he hasn't had to change his outlook as an estate agent, where his no nonsense, safety-first approach will continue to bear fruit.  

We're all soft as s*ite! OFFICIAL

Today's game with Gateshead has been called off.  Just because the ground is a bit hard.  And there's a bit of snow on the ground.  Ah, diddums!  When did we become so soft?  When did we stop simply clearing snow from the lines around the pitch, grab an orange ball and get on with it?  And when did it become acceptable for players to wear vest, gloves and now those bloody silly neck warmers just because the temperature has dropped a smidgen?

When did men stop being men?

Jonny Graham crashes the equaliser into the roof of the net!

It certainly wasn't like this back in 1992 when on a bitter Friday night in January the Poppies lined up against Colchester United in a top of the table clash.  Cold?  It was the sort of night where even Polar Bears wouldn't have ventured out.  And yet over four thousand of us slipped and slithered our way to the game, only to see us go 2-0 down before little Jonny Graham struck twice late on to get us a point.  And I don't remember a pair of gloves in sight.  Except for the two pairs of gloves, dozen layers of clothes, hat, and thick woolie socks I was wearing of course!

Surely the only reason the game went ahead was because it was being televised by some micky mouse oufit called Sportscast (?).  They had secured the rights to televise Conference games to the uninterested patrons of the few public houses in the country who had the "foresight" to believe that a bit of third rate kick and rush would gather in the punters....Needless to say the company offering this service lasted not much longer than the cold snap. 

Should the game have gone ahead?  No, of course not!  But one can picture the Sportscast hierarchy badgering the beleaguered officials into letting the game go ahead, allied no doubt, by a Poppies Chairman, weighed down by the enormous gate takings, that he would have returned over his own dead body!

Bye bye Andre

Andre Boucaud links up with Jordan Hadfield

I thought Andre's departure would leave me affected more than it actually has.  Instead of being angry or happy all I want to do is shrug my shoulders in an all too Gallic way. 

York City may have acquired a star.  Or not.  It depends on which of the three Andre Boucauds turns out for them.  Will it be the devil-may-care rampaging midfielder of Maison's days?  Perhaps he will be Cooper's hard running, tough tackling lynch pin?  Or, unluckily for York, he maybe the current holding player who cannot pass forward, keeps getting dispossessed when attempting his 976th drag back of the game, and can only kick the ball straight when it is to Noubissie?

I just hope we bank the fee in January before he realises how far York is from London!

Where Are They Now?

Any football manager losing their job is sad. Actually, scratch that. Justin Edinburgh getting the boot for leading the Scum to relegation - that I could live with!

The Poppies hot seat has seen more than it's share of bosses getting the boot. And where on earth do you go when you are deemed surplus to requirements by us? Well, it would appear that most of our managerial cast-offs employ their talents away from football - and who can blame them?

No.1 - Lee Harper



At Lee's chippie thankfully only the fish gets battered!



Fascinating Facts About Wimbledon



Wimbledon cliche No.1

 Home of the most prestigious tennis event in the world, and yet access to the site is worse than trying to get in and out of Redditch’s car park! Every year the nation dares to hope that for once Johnny Foreigner is going to be knocked off his winner’s perch by a local lad, and every year we are disappointed.

Our desperation for a British winner at Wimbledon has become so acute that we are all, reluctantly, clasping a whiny, nasty little Jock to our collective bosom in the hope that he win it for Blighty! He will then be hailed as a true British Champion, as opposed to the miserable Scottish loser he invariably reverts to before the fortnight is over.

Wimbledon was the home base for the infamous “Crazy Gang” in the 1980’s and 1990’s. This motley collection of cloggers spent several seasons hoofing the ball, and opponents around in the Premier League. They were the footballing equivalent of the rough boy from the council estate let loose with the frail young boys of the lower third from the posh private school.

Foremost among their ranks was Vinnie Jones, who made his name by fondling future Poppies boss Paul Gascoigne. Perhaps it was this incident that turned young Gazza toward the comfort of the bottle?

Vinnie has somehow carved a career for himself as an international footballer with Wales (!) and an action movie tough guy. The Welsh bit is something of a stretch as he is about as Welsh as Tom Jones’s latest hairpiece. Happily the acting part is more natural, given that he usually plays borderline psychotics.

Wimbledon cliche No.2

Oliver Reed, the drinking man’s Hellraiser is a famous son of the Borough of Wimbledon, as is the weedy-shandy-drinking-wanabee Martin Clunes.

We are constantly reminded that the character of Brian Lane in BBC’s “New Tricks” is a tedious AFC Dons fan even though he, and Alun Armstrong, the actor who plays him, couldn’t be more northern if he had a flat cap surgically grafted to his head and ate nothing but black pudding.

The most famous residents of Wimbledon are of course the loveable do-gooders, the Wombles. Back in the early 1970’s they were decades ahead of their time with the recycle and reuse message. However, their green credentials were tarnished by the amount of oil used to provide the plastic used in the manufacture of the millions of novelty records they produced. Consequently their carbon footprint is roughly the same size as the one caused by the Gulf war.

Kate Humble also comes from Wimbledon. Even if she didn’t, I think I’d still try to use this photograph…..

I'm going to kick myself for not coming up with a caption which somehow
includes Kate and her ornothological career!

1981 and all that

Someone once said history always repeats itself, the second time as farce.
History seems to be repeating itself big time at the moment.
Country in the grip of a recession. Tory government. Riots. A royal wedding. An Ashes series we might just win. For anyone of a certain age, we’re talking 1981. Should you be in any doubt, switch on the telly on a Saturday night and there’ll still be a big chinned, low rent version of Sammy Davis Jr grinning back at you beneath his wig.
As for the farce bit...
Country heading for the most severe austerity measures since post-war rationing and somehow those behind the plan have dictated the agenda that they had no choice, even though they did and this actually suits their purposes.
Riots but in a very modern, polite sense, where students come back later to scrub off the graffiti and organise a facebook campaign to name and shame those responsible.
Another bloody royal wedding and after 24 hours already I’m sick of it, yet in this hi-tech multi media age there will be no escape, and those who refuse to enjoy it will be forced into exile.
An Ashes series we might win but compressed into about a fortnight which means that the team that recovers best in the 4 hour gap between the 2nd and 3rd Tests will have the advantage.
And Brucie is still reading the autocue like it’s an innovation he first encountered yesterday and delivering gags that in normal circumstances ought to see him arrested.
So what does all this have to do with our beloved KTFC?
Echoes there too.
The team’s fortunes have dipped after a successful manager left to join a League club.
Off the pitch there’s a general feeling of impending doom.
No one beyond a dedicated 1,000 appears to give a monkey’s.
And on a bad day you can still hear Buck's Fizz before a match.

This town... coming like a ghost town.

Home and Away II

A few more excuses came to mind at the game yesterday -


The dug outs have been changed around (Sorry Lee, but that was one excuse too far)

The ref's always favour the ex-league clubs (Yeah, they do.  Bastards!)

The ref's always favour the smaller, part-time clubs (Yeah, they do. Bastards!)

Home and Away

We all know that our home form over the past couple of years has been appalling, but do we all know just how appalling?  The slide had well and truly begun under Cooper, when a wedge of home draws and good away wins helped mask the lack of home wins.  This continued and became more acute under Harper's tenure, and became more noticeable as the away wins started to dry up.

This season we are rock bottom of the home form league table, with only Hayes & Yeading put to the sword at Rocky Road.  And this is in the sense that "put to the sword" means we clung on desperately for the last 30 minutes, not daring to venture further forward than the edge of our penalty box.

Our away form puts is the 3rd best in the league, with us gaining just 3 points less on our travels than the Crawley millionaires.

Why is there this enormous gulf between home and away form?  Well, wonder no more!

Printed below is PATGOD's handy guide to all the excuses we have heard and/or used over the past couple of years.  Please feel free to dip into them come 4.45PM today after the Cambridge game.

The players are scared of the fans (possibly true given the number of uglies we attract)

The players are scared of being booed if they shoot and miss (it would be nice if they at least put this theory to the test now and again)

The supporters nervousness affects the players (Nervous!  Of course we're bloody nervous!  We don't win at home!  I'm amazed we don't all just chain-smoke through the entire game!)

The opposition players raise their game because they are playing at Rocky Road (that's right, a player who performs every other week in front of several thousand fans, or at shiny new stadiums is going to play out of his skin at our rusty ground in front of a thousand grizzlers)

The supporters don't support they team like they used to (we all like to think that in the past every man, woman and child at the ground screamed themselves hoarse for 90 minutes in support of the team.  In reality it has always been left to the drunken fringe to try to lift the quiet gloom - it's just that we have less of them these days)

The uncertain future of the Club hangs around the payers necks (I doubt that our precarious future is keeping many of the players awake at night.  In an industry where players can be employed or a monthly, weekly or even match-by-match basis it is unlikely that any of them will be worried by what might happen to the Poppies in a couple of years time)

The state of the pitch doesn't suit our style of play (but seemingly suits everyone else's!)

Pete Simcoe's plays shit music (True, but does that necessarily make the team play shit too?)

We are too friendly to the opposition (Try telling Rene Howe that!)

The players are bottlers (All of them?  All the time?  What about away from home?)

The ground is under a Gypsy / Egyptian / Druid curse (Well, we did once kill the copper-stealing Pharaoh who hailed from Glastonbury, but that was years ago!)

God Bless the 4.38PM goal rush!

At about twenty to five on Saturday it looked as though the Scum and the Plastic Jocks were both heading for big FA Cup headlines of the sort we have got used to over the past couple of seasons.  Not that we are at all jealous.  Heavens, no. (bastards!)

Corby were about to dump out Luton in front of hundreds of home fans who had never seen their heroes play anyone except the Poppies before.  The Direones were hanging onto a creditable draw against League One (still seems strange to type that) Yeovil Town.

By twenty to five the Scum were slithering to defeat in front of a worryingly minuscule gate of under 1700, and the Jocks had let in an equaliser.  All's better with the world again.  The county rings with cheers - Luton fans at the Triangle, Yeovil fans at Legoland, Kettering fans just happy that other local clubs were not winning, and of course Peter Mallinger dreaming of a big pay day from Corby's replay at Kenilworth Road.  Who knows, if they make a few quid out of the return game, Mallinger might be able to leave his begging bowl at home for a few more months, and keep the sob stories off the back page of the ET a little longer.

The Cube is Here!

The news of the opening of Corby's new "Cube" has excited everyone.  Even in old, unloved Kettering we are happy to press our faces to the shiny windows of Corby's brilliance and enjoy a quick bask.  How does Corby Council manage to pull off such coups for their people, when all our councillors can manage is a glorified skatepark and a big steel block which will obscure our view of the Parish church?

We happened upon the attached document, tracing the development of the Corby Cube from the initial, detailed design drawing through to the funding and completion.  It is truly a remarkable series of events showing what can be achieved with a diligent council, firm national leadership, and a "can-do" attitude.

Of perhaps even more interest than this document is the following timetable of events at the new cube.  These are heady days indeed and Corby's excitement is surely shared with the whole country!

Tuesday 2nd November 9.00AM - the Cube opens for business. 

Tuesday 2nd November 9.05AM.  A perfectly reasonable fight ensues at the Cube entrance between Celtic and Rangers fans, arguing over a battle fought by people in a different county half a millennium ago.....AND over whether the Cube should be painted green and white, or blue....

Tuesday 2nd November 9.15AM.  The local populace have cottoned onto the fact that the library and municipal offices within the Cube don't sell Lottery scratchcards, Irn Bru or cheap, chav-clothing.

Tuesday 2nd November 9.20AM.  The Cube is abandoned.

Tuesday 2nd November 9.25AM.  The first window is smashed.

Tuesday 2nd November 9.35AM.  The building is set alight by a local punch-drunk druggie.

Tuesday 2nd November 10.35AM.  The firebrigade have 20 units on site.

Tuesday 2nd November 2.30PM.  The worst of the fire has been put out and the fire brigade are allowing people back into their houses.

Tuesday 2nd November 2.35PM.  Corby Council call the National Government for more money to build something else.